NIELSEN: TV VIEWING UP 30PC DURING MCO
But overall advertising spend falls 8pc in February-March compared with a year ago
TELEVISION viewing has increased by 30 per cent on average during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period and this equates to an increase of almost one million viewers per average minute, according to the Nielsen Television Audience Measurement survey.
The market research company said as the Covid-19 situation had progressed, there had also been a distinct change in the distribution and size of the three time-defined consumer segments that television ratings were often analysed against.
The survey showed that when the first Covid-19 case was diagnosed in Malaysia on Jan 25, the spread between “Medium” viewers (those who watch eight to 16 hours of TV programmes per day) and “Light” viewers (those who watch zero to eight hours per day) was quite well distributed at 49 and 44 per cent, respectively.
However, by April 12, this had changed to 58 per cent Medium viewers and 32 per cent Light viewers.
This meant the average daily time spent viewing television had rising to seven hours and seven minutes following the implementation of the MCO, it noted.
“To look at it in a more simplistic way, at the end of January, a daily total of 29 million hours of television viewing was being consumed by the population, but by April 12, this had risen to 43 million hours, a staggering 49 per cent increase.
“More importantly, increases were seen across both free-to-air and paid-for platforms,” said Nielsen Media Malaysia managing director Jon-Paul Best in a statement.
“While we expected a rise in viewing as more people tune in to television to stay informed as well as to stave off boredom, we are surprised by the extent of the increase, which has surpassed viewing levels seen before the recent digital revolution.”
Further, the survey also showed that while the massive increase in viewing indicated that families and households were coming together to watch television shows, the eight per cent decline in overall advertising spend from February to March indicated that companies were cautious about whether to advertise or not.
While this figure did not appear too drastic in isolation, but if compared against March last year, there was a 25 per cent difference in like-for-like spend, Nielsen noted.
“Some businesses have questioned the benefit of advertising at this time if the population is severely limited in terms of what it can buy.
“However, as supermarkets remain open and as FMCG (fastmoving consumer goods) brands are some of the biggest advertisers, we believe that now is the time to invest in reaching out across all key media platforms, when consumers are most attentive and are looking for empathy,” said Best.